With the margin of error at 3.1, only education can be said to have definitely become a more important issue for voters. That the poll was taken just as students were returning to school, however, might be the reason for the change.

8 comments:

The North projection is based on the last three elections and the proportional change in national vote intentions, as there is no North polling. As the Conservatives and NDP have seen their national support decline significantly, while the Liberals have risen theirs significantly, the result is the Liberals winning the North. Remember, according to the projection the Conservatives have lost about 4-points, the NDP about 2.5 points, while the Liberals are up 6.

As for Alberta, the Liberal vote has grown quite a bit while the NDP is down, as is the Tory vote. That translates into the Liberals winning a seat and the NDP losing theirs. That doesn't necessarily mean that the Liberals will win the NDP seat.

Eric, have you actually looked at the results in Western Arctic in the last election? It was NDP 5,500, Tories 5,100, Liberals 1,800. The Liberal vote would have to TRIPLE for them to win that riding. I really don't see how any projection of current polling trends put them into a winning position there.

I think it's conceivable that the Health Minister will lose her Nunavut riding. She hasn't done anything spectacular to make her immune from vote shifts.

If we use a straight proportional increase or decrease based on national support changes, for Nunavut we get:

LPC - 35.2%CPC - 30.0%NDP - 23.5%GPC - 11.2%

For Yukon:

LPC - 50.6%CPC - 26.2%GPC - 16.1%NDP - 7.1%

For Western Arctic:

NDP - 38.6%CPC - 35.4%LPC - 17.9%GPC - 8.1%

So, I suppose an argument could be made to let the NDP keep their one seat, but the Liberals have gotten former NWT Premier Joe Handley to run for them in that riding, so it would not be surprising to see such a shift of votes there.

I realize that you aren't projecting individual seats, but I'm trying to understand how your model works overall. Since there is no polling in the territories and all we can do is either assume the status quo or else apply the national trend to the three seats - I just don't understand how your model would ever produce a Liberal sweep of the three seats when one of the seats was one that they lost by such a gigantic margin in the last election?

In the North, the Liberals win X amount of seats with X amount of votes, as do the other parties. Based on the projection, which incorporates the last three elections and the proportional change, the Liberals are at the level which gives them three seats.

As I've said, and as I'm sure you know, individual seats can swing greatly, especially ones like Western Arctic which have both a small amount of voters and a history of voting for other parties.

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